The Playground Diaries: Installment 8

*Full disclosure: The following is something I observed at the park and I'm telling you all about it now.*I took JD to the park yesterday. His little hand wiggled out of mine, and I quickly clicked the gate shut and ran after him. He was already dumping sand onto his legs. Toddlers are quick, and they make immediate decisions without warning. To hell with the sandbox--now it's time to throw rocks into the braided holes that make up the fence. When JD was a baby, he would sleep in his stroller and I'd pull the canopy over him, shading him. I would sit on the bench that looked out over the lake and read magazines, or a book, or jot down brilliant (not so brilliant?) ideas for a book. Those days are gone. There are magazines piled under my desk still in plastic. So when I saw a mom sitting at the little-kid table reading a gossip magazine, I smiled at her--then her son, about JD's age, came over to the table to retrieve his sippy cup and ran off. And I ran off after JD, who was now pushing the big-kid swings with two hands and scaring away when it flung back at him. Then something scary happened.

The tweens invaded the park. They had on short shorts and laceless *Ed Hardy *sneakers and black nail polish and were bragging about how Red Bull makes them feel "speedy." One girl was doing jumping jacks at warp speed. As usual they left the gate open and I thought about closing it, but JD was now climbing UP the slide saying "coo-wool!" Great. I grabbed him and started to walk over to it. That's when gossip-magazine mom's toddler ran, RAN, out of the park and down the sidewalk. The park, though gated, sits between the lake and a main road.

"OhmyGod, wait!" I yelled.

He didn't wait. He took off. JD would have done the same thing.

"Your son ran away," I yelled back to the mom. She didn't hear me. I ran after the boy.

Another mom ran over to her, and the next thing I knew, mom was running, magazine in hand, past me.

She thanked me, with tears rolling down her face. She was shaking. I felt so bad for her. A small circle of moms convened and I heard them say, "She never watches him." I popped JD into a bucket-seat swing and watched as magazine mom packed up her things with her boy on her hip. It was scary how fast the boy slipped away. I wondered what would have happened if I hadn't seen him. It gave me the throw-up-now feeling.

Discuss. Aren't toddlers a handful? They should come with instructions, I think.